


running south

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He realises he didn't leave to find something but to figure out where he'd lost something that had been missing for a long, long time.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	running south

There's this saying that if you want to make God laugh, make a plan. Sheva thinks about Ricky, his apparent lack of conscious coordination (natural movements, seemingly without careful deliberation, and the way the goals seem like they're based on blind faith alone and not calculations of metres or degrees; it's not coordinated until the celebration: perfectly symmetrical arms and hands pointing to the sky or pulling Sheva's forehead to his own), the way he lives for now, in the now, not the past or the future (Sheva has always been too tied up in both); the way he believes that tomorrow will be better, but if it isn't, or if there isn't a tomorrow, at least there'll be today and it'll mean something. It'll mean everything, because it's all we have. This moment. He believes in heaven, but he doesn't want to have to wait for it either. He can make it start right now. Sheva has always spent too much time moving forward to enjoy the view.

Ricky has that way he trusts in things, in people, in ideas, (in God), and Sheva thinks that that just might be dangerous. Or it should be dangerous. It hasn't been though. Not yet. So he starts to think that maybe if you trust, in that open, complete way, then the world does not deceive you, does not try to. He, however, has never known how to trust. Not like that. And this is why he's terrified when he finds himself beginning to. Because it's dangerous; it's supposed to be.

He doesn't leave because he's a coward. He leaves because he has to be sure, because everyone wants permanence and security, because those were things he once thought he might never have again. (And for him, this permanence is that there's always somewhere else to run to; he's always running.) In some ways, he acts like if he were ten-years-old again.

Ricky doesn't say anything, doesn't condemn him, because he trusts in people. He trusts when they don't deserve it. When they're already betraying it, and betraying him. He used to ask him what it felt like to get everything you want from life and Sheva remembers answering that he didn't know if he had yet. (He hadn't known if he ever would. It's easy to want the world, with reckless irrationality, but much harder to accept that you could never have it. This is when you really start thinking about it, and you recognise it wasn't irrational in the first place; it's possible, but you're just not good enough.)

Sheva hadn't known if he was good enough. Maybe he didn't deserve it because he wanted it for the wrong reasons (to prove he could, to battle his own insecurities and the destructive weakness growing inside him for most of his life). Maybe he didn't deserve it just because of who he was.

 

He makes a slip at some point in time, says, "Seven years is too long." _To stay in one place, to love something like it's still brand new._

Ricky just looks at him, looks at him for a long while, turns to leave but before he does, he shakes his head, says, "No, Sheva. It's too short. Sometimes, a lifetime is too short."

 

He realises he didn't leave to find something but to figure out where he'd lost something that had been missing for a long, long time.

 

London is a different shade of cold, and his eyes still haven't gotten used to the colours (the greys, and the _blue, blue, blue_ ). He speaks in funny tongues (a mixture of Russian, Italian and broken English), and plays in matches that don't seem to matter.

He leaves after two years, doesn't want to ever come back (does not question his reasons—not this time, not ever again), knows that in the few minutes in the few games he's played, he's only been running towards one place.

 

Ricky will not look mad but confused, unbelieving. He'll ask if this was his intention, if he intended to uproot his life for only two years and then hoped to go back to everything the way it was.

He'll say, "I didn't. I was here all the time. With you."

And when he asks how he knew there'd be a space waiting for him still, he says, "Trust."

 

He says, "There was a time I didn't have any expectations, when I thought none of it mattered because it could all be gone at any time, in the blink of an eye."

"That doesn't sound like you." Ricky frowns slightly.

"It didn't last long. Maybe it should have."

"So are you back to that now? Do you not have any expectations? Is that why you came back?" Part of him wants Sheva to break his heart (again), wants him to be a coward, the coward he's been trying to see him as for two years.

"No. No. I realised back then that living is about living, not waiting to die. And I remembered it again three weeks ago. But I realised, too, that it's okay to be happy with what you have right now."

 

Back then, he went from having no expectations to having every expectation in the world.

But then there was Milan, and there was Ricky, and he almost wanted to stop fighting the world, fighting for what could be his (because he started to feel like this could be enough—and he didn't have to run anymore or fight anymore—). And so he ran. For the last time.

 

(Then, there was homecoming.)

They sit on the grass of the San Siro, and Ricky turns to him, asks, "So what do you want from life now, Sheva?"

He thinks about the journey back, the journey here (airplane windows and car windows, looking out of them like the kid he used to be, doing all but pressing his nose to the cool glass—he will remember this for the rest of his life), and the Curva when it's alive, and red and black bleeding into each other and into his heart.

"Only what I already have."

 

Three months later, they start wondering if it is indeed possible to go back to the way it all was. To before, with uncoordinated goals and careful celebrations and well-placed kisses (and misplaced ones too) and glory.

Sheva, cautious, like before, like he's been, says, "I think sometimes that maybe I had to leave. So I could come back. So I could choose to."

Ricky curls his fingers around his wrist, says, "Life doesn't want us to give up - not now, not while we're alive. God taught me that. You taught me that."


End file.
